


Normality and all its Facets

by StevetheIcecube



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Experimentation (Past), Friends to Lovers, Friendship, In the familial way, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Zelda and Sheik are different people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: Zelda had been expecting the worst when she organised an investigation into the facility. It was listed as a child psychology research facility, so she’d been expecting the worst. She was expecting torture and bad conditions and children starving. She wasn’t expecting this.-When Impa helped rescue a group of children from a research facility, she hadn't expected that she'd be saddled with two of the kids. Link and Sheik are sweet, but now she has to teach them to be themselves, battling against what they've been taught to be and what society wants them to be.





	1. 1: Learning Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> The start of this was cowritten by my usual writing partner, Em, whose collab work with myself can be found at TheDoctorIsIcecube (they can also be found on Tumblr at heroofthesheikah).

Zelda had been expecting the worst when she organised an investigation into the facility. Nearly twenty years before it had stopped looking for public funding, but no one picked up on it. But after all the disturbances with science experiments gone wrong, she had to look into this place. It was listed as a child psychology research facility, so she’d been expecting the worst. She was expecting torture and bad conditions and children starving. She wasn’t expecting this.

There were no researchers around at the moment, it seemed- instead, there were just a range of young people all sat in rooms fairly calmly, acting as though absolutely nothing was wrong. This was...odd, to say the least. At first it was suspicious, too, but a thorough investigation showed nothing much to be suspicious about. There were weapons, but none of them showed any signs of being used. None of them seemed visibly distressed by anything that was going on, though some of the youngest couldn’t have been more than eleven.

It took her a while, but they found the scientific records. That was where they realised what was going on, and that was where they decided they should talk to some of the children.

There was a huge mix of children, and some of them were adults or nearing adulthood. The ‘test subjects’ themselves couldn’t tell them how old they were, but they all had knowledge of their names and what they were doing in the facility. What they were doing seemed bizarre- Zelda couldn’t quite tell if it was some sort of super-soldier program or something shady and eugenics-related, but either way, she’d never heard of anything like it before. And it was a little bit worrying.

One by one, they pulled children out of the rooms they were in and asked them questions. They’d managed to find the documents of what was going on, but Zelda firmly believed that they should be engaging with the people they were trying to rescue here. The first person she was talking to was a boy somewhere in the middle of the age range. He was a Sheikah boy, that much was clear, and his movements were curiously controlled. She walked with him to a quieter area of the facility, noting the way he kept glancing worriedly back towards the rooms as though there was something there that he needed to keep track of.

“Hello,” she said carefully. “What’s your name? Do you know what you’re doing here?”

The boy looked at her strangely, and Zelda was fairly sure she saw his eyes flick to her waist. “Hello,” he replied, his voice just as measured. “I’m called Sheik.” Zelda tried to hold back her frown as he said that. It was such a dismissive name for a Sheikah child. “I’m here to learn how to protect my...Link.”

“How to protect your link…?” Zelda glanced around, wondering what a link was. From the limited review of the official documents she’d seen so far, there hadn’t been any mention of such a thing. Either it was something off the record, or a codename for something she had already seen.

“No, he’s my charge,” the boy said. “His name is Link. His number is zero two zero five zero six. Should I-” So this boy was meant to protect one of the other boys. The names being fairly generic was something she’d noticed, and most of the documents just referred to the children by number.

“And you protect him?” She asked. Sheik nodded. “How old is Link?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said. His tone was still very careful; there was something he was trying to hide. “I’ve known him as long as I remember, though. He’s-” The boy cut himself off, and Zelda thought that maybe she had it this time.

“Do you want to go and find Link and bring him back here with you?” She asked. Sheik nodded, clearly trying not to look too eager. “You can do that, then.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, turning to leave the room. “One question, ma’am, if I’m permitted?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile she hoped looked encouraging. “You don’t need my permission to ask me anything. I’m here to help you.”

“Are the commanders gone?” He asked. Presuming Sheik meant the people who had been controlling the facility, she nodded, and Sheik’s face split into a large grin. “Thank you, ma’am! I’ll be back with Link soon.” And then he was gone.

Zelda let out a quiet sigh. What had she stumbled upon this time? At a glance, there were nearly a hundred and seventy young people and children in the facility. It was going to be hell to sort out.

Only a few minutes later, Sheik moved into the room again, and Zelda found herself noting how sure of himself he was as he moved. There was no trace of hesitance, or not understanding his changing body. He was clearly part of the group that the researchers had been training as some kind of super soldier.

The boy who followed him, however, couldn’t have been any more different. He was almost a head shorter than Sheik, who in himself wasn’t all that tall, and he was slightly hunched over. He was very pale, clearly Hylian, and fidgeting with his hands. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes, only his fairly pale blond hair that almost matched the colour of Sheik’s. “I’m back,” Sheik said.

“And is this Link?” She asked, moving to sit on one of the five chairs in the room. Both her and Sheik had stood earlier, but she imagined that Link would feel threatened by how much taller she was. She thought that the pair of them would opt to stand, but they both came to sit in chairs that were facing her. Link’s bluish green eyes were clear and alert, more so than she had been expecting from his posture. When he sat, he inched his seat slightly closer to Sheik’s, and the other boy did the same.

“Yes,” Sheik said, smiling at Link, who smiled back. “Do you speak Sheikah?” He asked. Zelda looked strangely at the pair. Sheik had seemed to be keeping up with the conversation in Hylian just fine, but maybe it was something she’d missed. It was also surprising to her, she supposed, that either of them would know more than one language.

“Not with much fluency, I’m afraid,” she said. Sheik nodded.

“That’s okay. You understand, right, Link?” Sheik turned to Link, who nodded. “We normally speak in Sheikah, but we’re both okay with Hylian.”

“That’s good, then,” Zelda said, mentally making a note that their first language would probably be considered Sheikah. She imagined it would be different for some of the other subjects, but she had yet to confirm that Sheik had been taught Sheikah and then presumably passed it onto Link because they spoke often. She wondered what their upbringings had been like for a moment, but she cut the thought off. They were not test subjects in a facility anymore. What these children had been through was illegal and should not be taken any further than a psychologist’s evaluation and any follow-up that was needed.

“Did you have more questions?” Sheik asked.

Zelda nodded. “Have you ever left this facility?” Sheik nodded, but Link shook his head. “Sheik, can you tell me about it? What did you do? Where did you go, and when was it?”

“I go out every few days,” he said. “Usually for drills or tests or practise. We all go in a van, a few of us, so we don’t know where we’re going, and we’re given tasks to complete.”

“What kind of tasks?” She could see where this was going, but for the sake of records she still had to ask.

“Normally to find something, or watch people and think about how they’re behaving, or to think about escape routes and vulnerable points. Sometimes we had to do things like going into shops and buying things, or other things that all the other people were doing.” Sheik’s attention was drawn to Link as he spoke. “It’s so I know how to protect Link when we don’t live here anymore.”

“Was it the same place each time, or different places?”

“Different places,” Sheik said. “There were only about seven places we ever went to, but they were all different, and we went to different areas in those places sometimes. We went to villages and cities and stuff like that, mostly. Where there were lots of people. Sometimes we went out into woods or onto hills and we had to follow maps.”

“Did you ever try to escape?” This was the important question. If all of the test subjects said no, they probably wouldn’t be able to prosecute unless other incriminating things came up, because of some kind of implicit consent thing. It wasn’t something Zelda believed was a proper defence, but many people saw it as such.

“No,” Sheik said, and he looked at Link again. “There isn’t really any reason to. I had no idea where I would go, and even though I didn’t want to be here, I knew I had to be because Link is here.”

“Would you say protecting Link is very important to you?” She asked. Sheik nodded immediately.

“It’s what I have to do,” Sheik said. “I don’t mind, because it’s my duty.”

The relationship between the pair was starting to unnerve her rather a lot, but Zelda knew she had to push on. “You say you didn’t want to be here. Why is that?”

“It’s boring,” Sheik said, and Zelda saw as Link smiled at that. “I have to do boring fighting all day and I don’t get to see Link that much. He gets to read all the time, but I never get to do anything fun like that.”

“I don’t get to read all the time,” Link said. His voice had a stronger Sheikah accent than Sheik’s, which seemed strange, but Sheik obviously got out more and practised his Hylian. Zelda hadn’t really realised until then how quiet he had been; Sheik was obviously a lot chattier. “I don’t like it here either but I’m not allowed to leave because Sheik isn’t ready to protect me all the time yet.”

“What kind of things do you do in your day, Link?” She had a good idea of what it would be. Link, like just less than half of the test subjects here, had probably been put down the path of studying in the attempt to create some kind of genius. As far as she could tell from the few files she’d skimmed through, they hadn’t succeeded in anything too remarkable; in fact, the files suggested that this half of the children was plagued with health problems.

“I eat,” Link said. Zelda didn’t want to say that it was fairly clear to her that Link probably ate more and exercised less than Sheik, because his weight didn’t look any more unhealthy than a normal teenager’s, at least at a glance. “Sometimes I do some reading, but mostly I work through...calculations and designs?” He sounded a little unsure of himself there, but both she and Sheik nodded.

“He designs things, like buildings and rooms and lots of things I don’t really understand,” Sheik said. “And he does coding. It looks pretty complicated to me.”

“I’m not allowed to teach him how to do it,” Link said, and he sounded like he was complaining about it. “We’re not meant to talk that much if I don’t need anything, but Sheik talks anyway.”

“Link!” Sheik looked at Zelda slightly fearfully, but it looked like he was trying to keep his face neutral and failing. “I don’t talk that much. It’s not anything bad and I swear it doesn’t stop him from doing his work.”

“She doesn’t mind,” Link said. “She’s meant to be here to help us get out of here, which means she doesn’t mind all the things that the commanders don’t like.”

“Link is right,” Zelda said. “Talking to each other is good and I fully encourage that that’s exactly what you do when I’m finished talking to you.” Zelda couldn’t believe the almost blinding smiles that lit both Link and Sheik’s faces. Being given permission to talk to each other causing that much happiness...she was glad that she’d been able to intervene here. “I just have a couple more questions, is that okay?”

Both Link and Sheik nodded, and she was able to get on with the interview. It was to be the first of many, and it definitely wasn’t the last time she saw the pair. Resettling all the children was going to be a difficult task, and getting them to integrate into society would be even more challenging, but this was the first step. Just letting them know they were free was the first thing Zelda had to do.


	2. Fostering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelda tries to find someone who'll take Link and Sheik in.

“I know this isn’t part of your job, Impa, but please,” Zelda said. “You’ll be fostering them, technically, so their living costs will be completely paid for. And you’re meant to go on paid leave soon anyway.”

“Why are you asking me?” The woman sitting opposite her, Impa, was a very intimidating Sheikah woman who Zelda had been working with for years. “I don’t have any children and my only experience with them is teaching normal Sheikah children how to stab people. I don’t think that’s what these children need.”

“I’ll admit you’re right there,” she said. The problem was that Impa was the only person she knew who had the unique qualifications to help Sheik and Link. It was unsurprising that there wasn’t anyone else, really. There weren’t many Sheikah in any form of government force. “But one of the boys is Sheikah and he’s been trained as such, as far as I can tell. If they…”

Zelda hated thinking of the poor children she’d met in that facility as a threat, but she had to. It was possible that they could overpower adults if they were not with the right people, and she hated thinking about what some of them would do if the person they had been assigned to protect was hurt by something. “You want me to help because I know Sheikah techniques,” she said.

“Yes,” Zelda admitted. There was no point trying to hide something like that. “But there are other reasons. He’d fit best into society if he’s with other Sheikah. I know it’s terribly...oh, you know what I mean. There aren’t many Hylians who’d treat him with the respect and patience he deserves. On top of that, he seems perfectly fluent in Hylian, but the boy he was paired with, who he’s very attached to, is definitely more confident speaking Sheikah.”

“Is the other boy Sheikah too?” Impa asked. Maybe the fact that she wasn’t flat out refusing was a good sign.

“No, he’s Hylian,” Zelda said. “But I think he probably has limited contact with Hylians. Sheik would have been his main form of company for the last few years at least.”

“They called him Sheik,” Impa said. She sounded absolutely furious. “Was he the only Sheikah in the facility then?”

“There were a few others, if I remember, but most are adults and a handful...some of their test subjects died. Locking children up means their health can never be all that good.”

Impa made a noise of disgust and Zelda caught sight of her making a hand action under the table, probably a blessing for the dead. It was something she’d seen Sheikah colleagues making many times over the last few days and it wasn’t something she was going to challenge; it was respectful. “I’ll take them, but only if your government funding for their care involves a name change for the poor boy.”

Zelda laughed, but she was incredibly relieved. She didn’t want the two of them to end up with people who didn’t understand what had been going on. She didn’t want them to be at risk. “I don’t know if he’ll want to, and it’s his choice, but none of them have official documents of any kind yet. Things can be changed as part of that process if he wants.”

Impa nodded. “When do I need to meet them? And what’s the other boy called?” Zelda was so glad that she seemed to actually care about them. Care was what they needed, above all other things. They just needed someone to understand them and accommodate what they needed while also imposing the limits they needed to one day fit into society. If anyone could impose limits, that person was Impa.

“His name is Link,” she said with a smile. “We can arrange a time now, if you like. They’re in...they’re in a holding facility at the moment and we want to get them out as soon as possible.”

Impa nodded. “I can come today, I don’t have anything else in particular. What do I do about the particulars for all the things they need? I don’t have enough furniture and they need clothes and food.”

“I think we can sort that out on the way,” Zelda said with a smile. If she was lucky, that would be another pair out of that dismal prison within the week.

-

This was more awkward than Zelda had expected. Link and Sheik were silent, and Impa seemed unsure of what to say too- she was busy looking with disgust at the place they were in. Zelda cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention, hoping that at least one of the three would bother to say hello.

“Link, Sheik, this is Impa,” she said. Link finally looked up from his hands, instead following Sheik’s wary stare to Impa. It was clear he saw her as some kind of threat and that was more worrying than anything else at this point. “She’s here to talk about getting you out of here.”

“Getting us out of here and going where?” Sheik’s question was asked rather sharply, definitely suspiciously- the look he was giving Impa could probably have melted a hole in the wall behind her, but it seemed like she was made of stronger stuff.

“To where I live,” Impa said. Her voice was very even. “It’s in Kakariko Town, a few miles north of here.” Sheik nodded, presumably having been there once or twice, while Link’s eyes dropped to his hands again. “It’s a fairly close community there, but people won’t ask too many questions about where you’re from.”

“Impa has offered to take you there by the end of this week, if the two of you are willing.” Zelda leaned across the table, offering a smile to both boys. “You should try it, at least. Living with someone who knows how to take care of people your age will help you get back to a normal life.”

“Why should we?” Sheik said. “I don’t know anything about living normally and neither does Link. It could be dangerous for him and I don’t want him to get hurt by a stranger.” He was still glaring at Impa, and Link was still very still.

“I swear I will do my best to protect both of you,” Impa said. “Even if you don’t need it, Sheik, I was there when we entered the facility you’d both been kept in and I don’t want to see you locked up forever.”

“We’ll try it,” Link said, so quietly that he was almost inaudible. Sheik clearly heard, though, and opened his mouth to protest before sighing and closing it again. “It might be good for us. If it doesn’t work, we can come back.” He then looked quickly towards Zelda before extending his hand towards Sheik’s.

“Fine,” Sheik said with a small smile. “I’m willing to try if you want to.” Now, he turned towards Impa, his hand firmly clasping Link’s still. “Do you speak Sheikah? Link understands it a little better than Hylian.”

“I do,” Impa said, and Zelda was glad that Sheik’s smile widened a little. It was nice to see them smile; sometimes it seemed like they had so little to be happy about. “But Zelda is here at the moment and she doesn’t, so I’ll stick with Hylian for now.”

Sheik nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What’s going to happen next, if we come with you? How can you guarantee Link’s safety? I understand that we should be free, and I want to be, but I don’t see how living closed up in a different place is going to help us.”

“I’m unsure of what all these people plan for you,” Impa said, and Zelda tried her best not to wince. Impa had a tendency to stray away from what the government wanted. “But I would like to be able to teach you more about society. I want to allow you the opportunity to live as people your age normally would; you should be able to go to college and make friends and maybe go to university.”

That was maybe a little too much to hope for, but Zelda imagined that maybe Link would be able to do it. Sheik was barely literate and far behind what he should be for his age, but there was no doubt that Link was a genius. He had been considered a ‘success’ by those who were testing him. Zelda hated the way they’d tested all of them as they came in; it felt like she was just trying to value them again, just like those people who had considered them all an experiment.

As it was, she didn’t say anything. All she could hope for was that this would be a success and these two would be happy with Impa. If they couldn’t be happy, if none of this worked, she wasn’t sure they’d get a second chance. They deserved a life, but she was angry at how difficult it was to get them one.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is deeply appreciated! Updates may be slow due to schoolwork, as at the time of posting (5th May 2017) I'm less than two weeks from my exams, which make up 50% of my mark for two thirds of my subjects.


End file.
